Vulcan
by Haiza Tyri
Summary: Sherlock Holmes thinks he is a sociopath. In reality, he's more like a Vulcan. NOT a Star Trek crossover, despite the title. Final sequel to "Archenemy," "Not Your Housekeeper," and "Conscience." Rated T for discussions of drugs and suicide.
1. I am a rock

**Author's note: This is the final group of drabbles in my Mycroft/Sherlock series comprising "Archenemy" (http:/www . fanfiction . net/s/6459881/1/Archenemy), "Not Your Housekeeper" (http:/www . fanfiction . net/s/6484644/1/Not_Your_Housekeeper), and "Conscience" (http:/www . fanfiction . net/s/6489370/1/Conscience).  
My drabbles are always exactly 100 words.  
The chapter titles are from Paul Simon's song "I Am A Rock, I Am An Island."**

**

* * *

**

_I am a rock _

Life is a swirl, intoxicating, fascinating, frightening. There is so much going on, so much to take in and figure out, too much to comprehend at once. People moving like blurs, talking, interacting, emoting, noise and noise. It's too much for a little boy to take, so sometimes he goes for days without talking to anyone, as if his own silence can make everyone else's noise more comprehensible.

The only way to make it all make sense is to categorize it, to understand the little, discrete parts. Then maybe the whole will coalesce into a complete image, clear and comprehensible.


	2. A rock feels no pain

_A rock feels no pain  
_

He sometimes wondered, until the day he chose to stop wondering, why Daddy didn't love him. He loved Mycroft, but then, Mycroft was good. But Sherlock had something better than that: he was intelligent. Of course, Mycroft was intelligent too, so Sherlock fell behind again. Always behind Mycroft, younger, shorter, skinnier, quieter, more wary of people, weirder.

Mycroft loved him, of course, in his didactic, bossy, older-brother way, but it wasn't enough. Perhaps there was something about him that made him not good enough for Daddy's love. That was always a possibility. He just had to make himself not care.


	3. Don't talk of love

_Don't talk of love_

He's sobbing helplessly and his brother is gently holding him and nothing has ever felt so good or so frightening. He's not crying about Daddy's death: he won't miss him. He's crying because he's afraid of the tidal wave he always knew was coming, the moment when all the emotion around and inside of him will crash down upon him. He has always feared it. It's there, ready to crush him, all contained in the sympathetic arm around him. The only way to oppose it is to deny it, hide it, lock it behind walls. He pushes away from Mycroft.


	4. Friendship causes pain

_Friendship causes pain_

"Oi! Weirdo!"

He stared at the boys. He knew them, four boys from his neighborhood, one his own age, three slightly older. One prodded the younger one.

"Go on, then."

Slightly red-faced, the boy allowed himself to be pushed forward. "You're a weirdo, Sherlock. That's what my dad says. He says there's something wrong with you."

The older boys laughed, and they all ran away as Sherlock just stood staring after them. He'd known that boy, played with him, showed him things. He'd dared to think they were friends. But it didn't matter. It couldn't matter. He locked it away.


	5. Shielded in my armour

_Shielded in my armour_

_Sociopath._ "Incapable of real human attachment to another." "Appears to be incapable of any true emotions."

The definition is long and involved, and even though he is a genius, at eight he has not yet learned to understand most of it, with its descriptions of paranoia and narcissism. He ignores the bits he can't understand or doesn't like. He understands the part that really matters. Sociopaths have no feelings. They can't be hurt; they just don't care.

It is a long time before he understands how wrong he is, how small and shallow sociopaths are. By then it's too late.


	6. Hiding in my room

_Hiding in my room_

He had an instinctive aversion to Spock the first and only time he watched him. The man was going to give him away. Anyone could tell that the Vulcan was an emotional creature held in the iron grip of his own will and intellect. Anyone could tell how much he lied about himself and hid the weak and vulnerable part away. If anyone could tell that about a man like Spock, who was half alien, it didn't take a great leap of logic to apply the same principle to Sherlock. Anyone with half an atom of intelligence could do it.


	7. I've built walls

_I've built walls_

Mycroft frightens him a little. Mycroft sees too much, understands too much, cares too much. Mycroft wants to help and protect his little brother, and as much as Sherlock wants to be protected, he knows no one can protect him from what really frightens him, and he can't afford to let anyone in, even his big brother. The only way to deal with the world is to keep it out; the only way to deal with himself is to lock those parts away that Mycroft wants to protect. Daily he builds walls of coldness and anger to keep Mycroft out.


	8. I have no need of friendship

_I have no need of friendship _

Needing people was at first an annoyance, later an amusement. How ironic that Mycroft, who didn't need outside influences to be content in his own mind, became the one who was all about working with people and that Sherlock, who couldn't bear people, needed their influence to keep from going insane inside his own head. At first he hated it, that he needed people; if he let them beat him up, he could resolve the tension between needing them and not wanting them. Later, amusement, superiority, perplexity at them became the shield that allowed him interaction on his own terms.


	9. I have my books

_I have my books_

Discovering what you're going to do with your life is a heady thing. Feeling all your past interests, the weird activities you always got in trouble for, coalescing into a single purpose, seeing the future suddenly straighten itself out, the path you will take, the profession you will create—there is no feeling like it in the world. It is better than all those _emotions_ Mycroft thinks you ought to feel. It is all in the brain, a certainty, a sureness, a confidence. You know who you are, you know what you will do, and no one can stop you.


	10. Sleeping in my memory

_Sleeping in my memory_

In the future, he will forget everything about Mummy's death. He will forget the way it marred his first year at Cambridge, the way it suddenly severed his connection to his own childhood, the way it made him want to cling to Mycroft and the way it forced him to shove Mycroft away again. Most of all he will forget what he deduced about her death, about the manner of it, about what that means for his whole past. Thinking about Mummy will do nothing more than bring up the old rivalry with Mycroft again. He will make himself forget.


	11. In a deep and dark December

_In a deep and dark December_

What Sherlock hated most about Mycroft "helping" him with his perfectly manageable cocaine habit was the appearance of vulnerability. He didn't have a problem, and he didn't need help, and he hated his older brother thinking he did. That, of course, was why Mycroft had kidnapped him anonymously during the Christmas holiday and never made any reference to it, and that almost made it even worse. It was humiliating to realize how much Mycroft understood him. Mycroft knew how to "manage" him. Well, he wasn't going to be managed. Not by Mycroft or by anyone. He'd leave the country first.


	12. Laughter and loving I disdain

_Laughter and loving I disdain_

His first real case. Now, _that_ is something even a sociopath can get excited about. The keen, sharp sensation of his own brilliant brain at work, doing what no one else can, seeing what no one else can see, putting together details no one else would dream of understanding. All these dull little young people (older than he, most of them), so excited about their dull little party, giggling together about idiotic things over dinner, breaking up into pairs, shrieking with horror at one little dead body…what can they know of true pleasure, the pleasure of a mind that _works?_


	13. Silent shroud of snow

_Silent shroud of snow_

Mycroft would never understand. How annoying that the one thing Sherlock wished Mycroft _did_ understand was the one thing he never did. That was why. Why he did what he did, why he took up all sorts of peculiar professions and studied all sorts of seemingly random subjects, why he refused politics. Why couldn't Mycroft understand that this _suited_ him?

The more Mycroft didn't understand and tried to force him into his own mold, the more Sherlock opposed him. He took delight in startling and embarrassing him that winter by becoming homeless and proving how unobservant even perfect Mycroft was.


	14. Feelings that have died

_Feelings that have died_

The thing about pretending to be something your whole life is that eventually it comes true. Eventually you realize you really are what you have pretended, that your mask has replaced your true face, that it has become your prison, and even that you couldn't bear to live outside the prison of your pretense.

The cocaine isn't just for boredom. In the absence of work, the cocaine drowns out the sensation of being trapped inside your own mind. Of having dug your own pit and buried yourself in it. There's nothing left inside but the mind. Everything else is transport.


	15. I am alone

_I am alone_

Perhaps disowning Mycroft and fleeing all the way to Florida was a bit drastic, but drastic measures were often called for when you were dealing with Mycroft. The man was smothering him to death. What did you call someone who hounded your every step and opposed you at every turn? Your enemy, and as Mycroft put it so elegantly, neither of them was ordinary enough to be anything but an archenemy. Let his archenemy sit in London and ponder that for a while without a younger brother around to try to dominate.

Meanwhile, the older couple next door were intriguing…


	16. Safe within my womb

_Safe within my womb_

In his illness he is vulnerable again. For a while he is ill at home, with Mummy taking care of him, gently stroking his hair, making everything better, making him feel guilty for the way he's acted. For a while he's frantic with the thought that she will make her end without ever knowing that he is sorry…sorry for everything. But she does know. She tells him she forgives him. When he's himself again, he realizes what happened and is ashamed.

But later he knows he will do anything for Mrs. Hudson, and he doesn't consider that an internal contradiction.


	17. To the streets below

_To the streets below_

America had been a valuable series of experiences. That country pervaded so much of life all around the world that having first-hand experience of its inner workings was invaluable, essential. But still…it was good to be back in London again. Back in his own world, on his own streets, among his own criminals, because there were no criminals quite like London criminals. American criminals played the Game, but their flair was not the flair of London criminals.

The first thing to do would be to go see Lestrade. The second thing to do would be to not go see Mycroft.


	18. A fortress deep and mighty

_A fortress deep and mighty_

It is difficult to see Mycroft again. Life has been going so well without him. No one stalked him in America—well, no one but real criminals, which was different. No one tried to tell him what to do—well, no one but Mrs. Hudson, and that was different, too. But now he's back in a world run by Mycroft, and to see him with equanimity, he must be impenetrable. He must speak to him as he would speak to an enemy, as if _he_ were the one in control. Things will not return to how they used to be.


	19. None may penetrate

_None may penetrate_

It was infuriating, needing a flatmate. It wasn't like an assistant. An assistant was a sort of machine, useful in some situations, otherwise ignorable. But a flatmate. _Living_ together. Sharing the same spaces, seeing each other daily. He'd had enough of that at university. Even his neighbors couldn't bear to be around him, and he couldn't bear to be around them, much less live with them. Someone else touching his equipment and talking when he was trying to concentrate and making a fuss about what he left in the refrigerator.

Anyway, who would want to be flatmates with Sherlock Holmes?


	20. To protect me

_To protect me_

Military service. A steady hand. A steady mind. An absolute moral compass. Not the sort of person likely to be following this serial cabbie around, either as an enemy or a sycophant. Who shoots the enemy only when it seems likely that Sherlock will succumb to the wiles of the Game? Who thinks to protect him not from the enemy but from himself? For that is what he did.

At first Sherlock is angry. How dare this _protector_ strip his Game from him? How dare he come between him and the dangerous stimulation his mind craves?

Later he is grateful.


	21. I touch no one

_I touch no one_

Before, John Watson had been a body to make use of, a small brain to bounce ideas off of, an assistant who actually admired what he did, even if he didn't understand it. But in an instant it had changed, subtly but irreparably. Which moment was it? The moment he realized John had saved his life and Sherlock made the instantaneous decision to protect him in return? Or that astonishing moment when John called him an idiot and he caught in his eyes the amused intimacy that only friends shared? Friends. He could not deny it, though he wanted to.


	22. No one touches me

_No one touches me_

He takes John to the bank. He introduces him to Sebastian as his friend. When Sebastian jumps to the inevitable conclusion (Sherlock doesn't have friends, so he must have lovers? Don't people learn logic anymore?), he and John share a wry look. He's never had someone to share a wry look with before, the kind where both know what the other is thinking because there is shared history and mutual sympathy of feeling. There is nothing demanding in this relationship, this friendship, not in the way there was with Mycroft. This one is safe. It's just two flatmates being friends.


	23. The slumber of feelings

_The slumber of feelings _

When John came out, in that stupid, fluffy coat, for a single instant that lasted as long as eternity Sherlock thought he had been wrong about the friendship. He thought how foolish he had been, how stupid to allow himself the vulnerability of feeling that it was safe to let another person in.

And then the truth superseded the feeling of foolishness, and that was even worse. Worse than a personal betrayal was the thought that he was going to get his friend killed. He had allowed someone in, and now he was forced to feel something for the victim.


	24. I never would have cried

_I never would have cried_

John is not a victim. He is a soldier. He is a man of action who faces death solidly, without flinching, because he has to. Because he is not a victim but a friend. When he grabs Moriarty from behind and his eyes say, clearly, _Go. Let me save you,_ Sherlock understands for the first time in his life what friendship really means. John shows him that sometimes there is strength and wisdom in caring for the victim. Some quotation he never knew he knew drifts, inappropriately, though his mind. _"There is a friend that sticks closer than a brother."_


	25. An island never cries

_An island never cries_

He didn't realize he was rubbing his head with his—John's—gun, that he was wheeling up and down helplessly, for once unsure of what to do, what to say, what to think. He had almost got his friend killed. What was he supposed to do or say to that? He had been so _delighted_ with this Game, with this chess match against a mind as fine as his own. He had refused to think about the pawns, the minor pieces, until one of them was the one person he could not sacrifice. Maybe it wasn't a game after all.


	26. I am an island

_I am an island_

He will sacrifice his life. Not just for John. Oh, yes, mostly for John, because John has taught him what it means to be connected, what it means to be part of the human race.

But he will sacrifice his life for the future. Moriarty cannot be allowed to win. He cannot be allowed to go out and play his games with those innocent lives John is so fond of. _Someone_ must stop him, and as John nods his nod of mutual understanding at him, Sherlock knows he will do it. Because he is different than Moriarty. He is human.

* * *

**The end. At least until the next season comes out...**

**In case you're wondering, here are the lyrics to the song I have used for chapter titles:**

_I Am A Rock I Am An Island, by Paul Simon_

A winter's day  
In a deep and dark December:  
I am alone,  
Gazing from my window  
To the streets below  
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.

I am a rock  
I am an island.

I've built walls,  
A fortress deep and mighty,  
That none may penetrate.  
I have no need of friendship  
Friendship causes pain.  
Its laughter and its loving I disdain.

I am a rock  
I am an island.

Don't talk of love;  
Well, I've heard the word before;  
It's sleeping in my memory.  
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.  
If I never loved I never would have cried.

I am a rock  
I am an island.

I have my books  
And my poetry to protect me;  
I am shielded in my armour,  
Hiding in my room,  
Safe within my womb.  
I touch no one and no one touches me.

I am a rock  
I am an island.  
And a rock feels no pain;  
And an island never cries.


End file.
